


Stupendous Work of a Titty Nature

by sheepsinthenight



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Humor, So many bones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 03:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21029567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepsinthenight/pseuds/sheepsinthenight
Summary: Sixteen year old Gideon Nav has managed to acquire her first dirty magazine. Of course, whenever Gideon finds something precious, even if that thing is very stupid, it's never long before Harrowhark's finely-tuned asshole instincts kick in. Hijinks ensue.





	Stupendous Work of a Titty Nature

After a long day in the dusty darkness of the Ninth House, Gideon Nav pulled open the door to her cell and flopped face-first onto her bed. She kicked off her boots, then wrestled out of her church robe, letting it sag into a polymer heap on the floor. After a luxurious stretch, now clad in a tanktop and baggy shorts, she got to her feet, picked up her robe, then crossed the five paces back to the door.

First, Gideon balled up the robe and shoved it between the metal bars of the cell window. She arranged the fabric to block any view into her room. Next, from the floor beside her, she picked up a rusted polearm. Half of the wooden shaft was covered in nasty-smelling mildew, which she was careful not to touch. She wedged it into the space below the door handle, then jammed the pointy end into a crack in the adjacent stone wall. Considering it had come from the catacombs, the spear was surprisingly study. It wouldn't hold up under a battering ram, but it might briefly vex an intrusive skeleton.

Satisfied with this, Gideon crossed back to her bed and stepped up onto the hard mattress. She placed a besocked foot atop her nightstand. The particle board creaked beneath her as she shifted her weight to reach an air vent set high into the wall. She laced her fingers through the metal grate, which pulled outward with a pop.

She groped inside the vent, rising onto her tiptoes with her cheek pressed against the stone wall. Plastic crinkled beneath her fingers. From the grubby recess, she pulled forth her newest and most prized possession, the most elicit contraband in a House full to bursting with secrets: _Babes and Blades Volume 3_.

The magazine was wrapped in a clear plastic bag, taped shut. Gideon held it in her hands like a treasure. She unwrapped it like an offering. She set it on her bed like a goddamn newborn baby.

_Babes and Blades Volume 3_ was a Fourth House publication. It had taken Gideon months to acquire. The initial phase of her plan had involved ordering a series of training manuals from off-planet, forging Aiglamene's crabbed signature. Eventually, she buried the magazine's title in a list of other martial books and brochures on order. If anyone saw it in person, pretending the magazine was a training manual would work for exactly zero seconds.

Seated on the edge of her bed, she opened up the plasticky pages and began to peruse.

_Blades and Babes Volume 3_ wasn't explicit so much as unsubtle. The women were amazing. Their armor was strategically skimpy, forever in the process of being torn away. A lot of the fighting involved pointing swords at one another's heaving breasts. Another major motif appeared to be wrestling in improbably uncleanly locations. It was maximum cheese and maximum camp. It was _perfect?_

Gideon flopped down onto her bed with the magazine over her face. She exhaled a triumphant breath of bliss.

She plucked the rag off her nose and set it reverentially beside her. Rolling onto her side, she reached out to push her pillow into shape behind her head. As she lifted the pillow, she revealed beneath it a single metacarpal.

The metacarpal is a humble bone from the hand: narrow in the middle and rounded on both ends. Gideon gaped at it for a long, horrified moment. She reached out slowly, like sneaking up on an insect that had briefly alighted. A breath, then she slammed her palm down.

Inside her fist, the metacarpal was suddenly twitching and quivering.

Gideon cast about her room wildly. She slid off the bed and dropped to her knees to pull open the drawer in her nightstand. She flung the little bone inside, slammed it shut, and pressed the drawer in place. A whizzing sound began from within as the metacarpal pinballed around the small space. It ricocheted off the drawer's contents: a mostly empty container of sword polish and a completely full container of face paint.

Then the sound changed: suddenly, there was scraping and rattling. Gideon shifted so she had her shoulder and full weight pressed against the drawer. When the whole piece of furniture began to rock back and forth, she reached both arms out to hold it in place.

A hard slam against the back of the nightstand nearly knocked it out of her desperate embrace. Another slam, and a skeletal hand punched through the particle board at the back of the drawer. Then the motherfucker was free.

The motherfucker turned out to be a bone construct of two hands conjoined by radius and ulna. It was like at the end of an elbow, instead of a continuing humerus, there was simply another hand. The two hands worked in tandem to pull themselves up onto the bed, swinging upward on the folds of her unmade sheets. Gideon scrabbled to get off the floor.

In swift, synchronized movements, the hands rolled up _Babes and Blades Volume 3_. One set of phalanges closed around the roll. The construct shoved itself onto the floor on the other side of the bed as Gideon lunged after it. It sprung up so that it held the magazine aloft in one hand, while beneath it, the second hand propelled it across the floor like a clattering, mad spider.

Gideon tried to kick it as it passed her, but missed. The construct made it to the door. The bottom hand pressed itself flat, then sprung upwards with shocking efficacy to close the distance to the cell window. Perched on the edge of the window, it shoved the robe out onto the floor of the hallway. In an instant, it slipped out between the bars.

Gideon stared after it. She let her body tilt gently towards the floor, then let out a prolonged, "Uuuuuuuggggghhhhhh!" The stone was cold against her forehand and smelled like a moldy rock.

This was why she couldn't have nice things. Because Harrowhark Nonagesimus was a huge bitch.

Considering the depths of her frustration and mortification, Gideon collected herself quickly. She got to her feet and pulled out the spear wedging the door. With a grunt, she yanked the door open. Then she was off, up the long flight of stairs leading away from her cell.

The hop and skitter of boney fingers was loud against the steps. At least the construct would be easy to follow.

As Gideon huffed up the spiral stairs - while her biceps were a marvel, leg day was not celebrated on the Ninth - she tried to decide which ass bone made the best insult for when she encountered the Revered Daughter. "Pubis" was fun to say, but it didn't sound offensive enough. "Sacrum" had a kind of visceral quality at the base of the spine, but it lacked some oomph.

She was shaken from her contemplation when she ran headlong into a nun, who was treading carefully downwards carrying an armful of oss. Miscellaneous bones tumbled down the stairs like the destruction of a morbid piñata. The nun wailed in alarm. Gideon offered a vague sound of apology as she pushed past to continue upward.

After ten floors, Gideon paused abruptly and a bit breathlessly. The direction of the skittering had changed. An arched, cave-like hallway stretched away from the landing. It was dimly lit by amber floodlights, each of which had be set into the open mouth of a skull. At the edge of her vision, Gideon could just made out a low shape scuttling across the floor.

She took off running. As she rushed past each skull light, it clicked onto a brighter setting, conspicuously marking her path down the hallway.

Gideon tried to control the tide of anxiety rising in the back of her brain. She knew this route eventually led to the library, but she never went into this wing of Drearburh. This was because Harrow spent most of her time in the library, and Harrow sucked like a bucket of ticks.

At the end of the hallway, the construct darted around a corner. Gideon followed only a few meters behind. The skull lights continued here, but between them, the walls’ craggy stone was interrupted by metal doors. These led to various small rooms used by the nuns for contemplation and prayer. The construct seemed to sense Gideon’s proximity and scrabbled desperately onward. The magazine-clutching top hand leaned back as if in a stiff wind. She was two meters away, then one.

Gideon lunged forward and felt her knee scrape against stone. Her fingertips brushed the bone of the supporting arm. Then her fingers closed around nothing, and Gideon sprawled on her face.

One of the doors opened in front of her. From its halo of amber light appeared Harrowhark Nonigesimus. Her painted face wore its typical expression: piercing yet distracted, and eternally ready to pivot to a smirk. She did so now upon seeing Gideon.

Her robes pooled around her as she knelt down to the construct. Both her hands were outstretched, like it was little creature and she was a bone princess ready to sing it a song. Harrow plucked from its unclenched grasp _Babes and Blades Volume 3_, still tightly rolled. With her free hand, Harrow interlaced her fleshy phalanges with the construct’s boney ones. Its component parts shrunk and collapsed in on themselves, until a single metacarpal rested in Harrow's palm. As she stood up, she absently put the bone through a stretched hole in her earlobe.

Gideon got to her feet and tasted blood; she’d bitten her tongue while falling. She was feeling very unarmed and very in her pajamas. To her credit, she kept her tone casually affronted. “You used your ear bone to steal my shit? That's both rude _and_ gross.”

"You've been draining the coffers of the Ninth on stupid military training manuals.” Harrow tapped the rolled magazine against her open palm. To Gideon, this action seemed to occur in agonizing slow motion. “You're never going to join the Cohort, Griddle. Just knock it off."

“I’m trying to further my education,” Gideon protested. “You have a whole library of necromantic theory. You have books coming out of your ass.”

“Why can’t you ask the Captain of the Guard if you want - ” Harrow had unrolled the magazine. Gideon’s brain was no longer able to process words. When the Revered Daughter actually looked down at what she held in her hands, Harrow’s mouth was no longer able to make words happen.

Gideon decided instantly that her only option was to show no fear or chagrin. She crossed her arms in a pose of defiant nonchalance. "Look, I got it here. Now it's mine. Are you ready to quit being a coccyx and give it back?"

Gideon thought this was a great moment for the ass bone. Harrow, as usual, was ignoring her comedic genius. Instead, she had become preoccupied leafing through the pages of the magazine.

The Revered Daughter's face paint was always perfectly applied. Therefor her reddening blush was only visible at the tips of her ears and where her jaw met her neck. Perhaps it was only noticeable to someone like Gideon, who had spent fifteen years observing minute changes in the other girl’s face.

As Harrow turned pages, she composed her expression like the deliberate arrangement of a symphony. The artful disdain of a raised eyebrow. The slight, hateful quirk of her blackened lips. A contemptuously wrinkled nose. But that blush!

"Oh my God,” Gideon said, “The Heir to the House of the Ninth is embarrassed by a girlie mag."

Harrow shut the magazine with a speed that Gideon found hilariously gratifying. “Why are you like this?” she demanded. "To act out, of course you'd resort to something so piteous and nasty.”

"You are flustered by this stupendous work of a titty nature."

"Stop it, Griddle," Harrow snapped.

Gideon reached out to grab the magazine, but Harrow reflexively jerked it away from her. Gideon let out a delighted bark of laughter. "If you're that interested, I bet I can hook you up with something more your style. I'm sure they make this shit for necromancers. Babes and Bones? Babes Get Boned? Whatever."

Harrow twisted her face in disgust. "You are an eternal, festering embarrassment."

"What else is new?" Gideon was grinning from ear to ear. "So are you gonna keep it? Get your rocks off to some buff pseudo-cavs? Or are you gonna give it back to me and pretend it's too base for your osseous tastes?"

Harrow paused for way too long. She held the rag like her hand was caught in a trap: she wanted to put it down but could not. At this point, she could have ripped up the damn thing and Gideon would still have considered this interaction a victory.

Black eyes met amber. Then, Harrow yawned. The picture of nonchalance, she rolled her shoulders back and stretched out her arms above her head. The sleeves of her robe fell down to her shoulders, revealing her pale, scrawny arms. Gideon tensed, but Harrow merely dropped her arms back to her sides. Then she allowed a sneer to settle on her face. This one was airy condescension, not outright malice.

She neatly rolled up the magazine and held it out to Gideon. “I hate that you’ve done this, of course, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due. You got it here. It’s yours.”

Gideon took the magazine suspiciously, despite the surge of triumph at the touch of plastic. There were only seconds of confusion before the other shoe dropped. Harrow continued, "Besides, if you're just here after this, I take it you didn't find the second metacarpal."

Gideon blinked. "Hey - what the fuck?"

Harrow said, "The other one was was supposed to take your sword and replace it with a shitty one from the catacombs. If you get back in time, you might be able to catch it. "

"You're lying."

Harrow turned her head and pointed. Her stupid, motherfucking, goddamned bone earring was missing from the sagging hole in her left ear.

Gideon said, "Please die."

"You first." Harrow smiled. "Oh, but before it takes your sword, I commanded it to hide all your socks deep in an air vent. So. You know. Have fun getting weird blisters while you're training.” Harrow turned around briskly, causing an impressive robe billow, and began to walk back down the hallway. The lights flared as she passed. Her shadow lengthened and shrunk with skull light proximity.

Gideon called out, “Die painfully in a fire, then get resurrected by somebody who makes your skeleton mop up your cooked meat.”

“Creative!” Harrow said over her shoulder. “Won’t help you get your socks back, though. Or your sword. For that,” she smirked, “you’ll have to run.”

Gideon let out a cry of exhausted frustration. She turned and did as Harrow said: she ran. She ran clutching her magazine in her fist.

When she got back to her room, exertion had left blood at the back of her throat. As she wheeled into the room, consternation scrunched up her face. Her sword was atop the trunk at the foot of her bed. Gideon sat down hard on the trunk and pulled open the scabbard a few centimeters to examine it. A clatter at the doorway made her head snap up. Something outside her cell door has pulled it closed. She flew to the door to yank on the handle, but it was locked.

Through the barred window, Gideon watched a construct skitter away from the door. The top hand clutched a heavy, iron key. She watched it until it reached the stairway and was lost to view. Then slowly, she turned back. She lurched over to her dresser and opened the top drawer. All her socks were gone.

For forging the Guard Captain’s signature and misusing House coin, Gideon was locked in her room for two weeks. However, compared to her previous periods of confinement, those weeks were far easier to bear, thanks to the company of the pugnacious, scantily clad women of _Babes and Blades Volume 3_. A partial victory was the only kind of victory Gideon ever knew.

**Author's Note:**

> I have to give credit to Reddit user hymnning, who asked in Tamsyn Muir's AMA, "Which house makes the titty mags?" The idea of 'the origin of Gideon’s dirty magazines' was so hilarious that it inspired this fic. Hymnning also asked if Gideon's legs were as buff as her arms, and Muir's response contained the shocking revelation that "leg day is not celebrated on the Ninth." 
> 
> The title, of course, is pulled directly from canon. What a book.


End file.
